Nicaragua and its Treachery

.

This is where Granada is in relation to Costa Rica.

So just after my last post I ran into four of the girls from my group on the street corner. They were all out of breath and one of them was crying, and they looked scared as hell. It turns out that they had just been mugged, with one of the girls getting her purse literally ripped out of her hands. They were a block or so away from the Bearded Monkey, a cool little hostel/restaurant/bar when they got directions from a security guard. They turned down a street that had no lights (this is around 830 pm) and noticed a group of kids around 18 or so closed up the street behind them. They walked faster and took another turn and the group was gaining on them. I guess one guy ran after them and grabbed Kristen and tore the purse out of her hands. Everybody else ran away with the rest of the mob screaming, "¡Corre, corre!" (Run!). Kristen was such a mess from the whole thing that she ended up going home the next day (as in back to Seattle). This is the same girl that had her backpack literally taken out from under her feet at McDonald's in Heredia, losing her camera and laptop about a month ago. There was a bunch of fallout from some of the girls in our group that night with our director Max, mainly stemming from the incident and the fact that he found out about it soon after and instead of coming back to the hostel where the girls were waiting for him (not sure what they thought he was going to do though) he stayed out drinking with others. They said it was irresponsible and that he didn't care, which is understandable to a certain extent. However, all of us are adults, at least twenty years old, and it's not his job to babysit us. There was a lot of crying and complaining, etc. I think it's safe to say that he sobered up very quickly when he realized he was up against a mob of sober, terrified, disgruntled women. Glad I wasn't a part of that one.

On to Thursday. We went to a university in Managua, the capital city of Nicaragua, to meet with various professors to get material for our papers. It was an hour and a half on the bus there, which was not a fun ride for the people who were out drinking the night before. We were introduced to the four different professors in their little catholic church building. They sang a song for us (national anthem of Nicaragua maybe?), which was unusual because the students weren't scared or embarassed to sing. They were actually all into it. They wanted us to sing a song after but we didn't, which I was completely fine with. No musical talent over on this end.

The next couple hours was a discussion in a tiny teacher's office with a female professor who talked with us about our topic--immigration. It was very, very interesting and helpful (at least for me), but she didn't speak English. I had to do a lot of the translating, which was good practice for me. Anyway I have a lot of good material that I'll be sure to talk about later, but I'm a little out of it still. One thing I will note that is interesting is the stereotypes between Nicas and Ticos.

• Ticos view Nicas as lazy, cochino (pig-like), stupid, uneducated, unrefined, having darker (uglier) skin, and as being violent, causing Costa Rica's social problems, and taking any job they can get their dirty little hands on.
• Nicas view Ticos as being materialistic, desiring lots of money but not having it, being vain, spending money on their image, haugty, stuck-up, less friendly and helpful, and thinking they are better and more sophisticaed than anybody else in Central America.

I had encountered that stereotype of Nicaraguans in Costa Rica, and I asked her how that reputation started. She said around 1980 after the end of Nicaragua's civil war. At that point in time lots of Nicas would leave their farms and head south to Costa Rica to work in the coffee fields. It paid better and there was a perpetual labor shortage in the booming coffee industry. Most of the fields were centered around San José, so these campesinos would generally eat, live, etc. in San José while there were in Costa Rica to pick coffee. Thus, you get the Costa Rican impression of a Nicaraguan: a darker skinned, poor, dirty, uneducated campesino living in the big city. That's how it all started, more or less.

Anyways after that we had lunch and went to a laguna to go swimming for a little bit. We convinced a resort to let us use their dock and bathrooms to change. In exchange we had to do a kayaking competition to entertain the resort guests (who were primarily older and American, and largely Morman). There were about ten of us. Two at a time raced down to a water buoy, turned, and came back, with the loser being eliminated. I won my first two races and ended up in the finals against a guy from Belgium who had a cigarette between heats, and almost missed his second race because he had to take a bathroom break after "seven beers." I knew he'd be winded, so I tried to give him as little rest as possible. I beat him in the finals and won a free pint of Flor del Caño 7 year rum, which is great.

We headed back to the hostel briefly, then went to a market that has live music on Thursdays. I got some goodies, which will remain secrets so people don't spy on what I may or may not have gotten them...and several people bought hammocks. There are a ton of them here. Once I can upload pics or get them from other people I will. One thing worth noting--I had a real steak for the first time in several weeks, and it was glorious. Thought I should mention that. We hung out and watched the traditional dancers and had a couple beers, leaving there at 900 or so, then back to the hostel for Megan's birthday!

It was Megan's 21st birthday, and we went to this crazy bar called...well I don't know what it was called. It had a crazy Jesus crucifixion statue on the wall and other funky decorations. I went home around midnight because Friday's supposed to be the busiest day (and it ended up being pretty busy). More on that later. Nap time.